CINCINNATI -- Before turning our full attention to free agency, the draft and the 2015 season, let's take one last look back at 2014.

We're doing that all this week through this position-by-position review of the Cincinnati Bengals' recent 10-5-1 campaign that ended with a wild-card round loss at Indianapolis.

We started with the quarterbacks. Now we continue with the running backs:

2014 cap value: $3.4 million total -- Giovani Bernard ($1.2 million), Cedric Peerman ($1.1 million), Jeremy Hill ($682,473), Rex Burkhead ($520,550)

Highlights: You can't reference running back highlights without mentioning Hill. The rookie finished the season with 1,124 yards rushing, five shy of tying the rookie franchise record set by Corey Dillon. The bulk of the yards came in the latter half of the season, after Bernard was lost three games with multiple injuries. While Bernard was out, Hill posted two 140-yard plus games. A couple of weeks after Bernard's return, the rookie was eventually named the feature back. Hill led all NFL rushers the last eight weeks of the regular season with 929 yards.

Bernard's biggest highlight was his 89-yard touchdown run in the tie with the Carolina Panthers. It was Cincinnati's longest play of the season. Burkhead had a few highlights, too. At the end of a 14-play, 86-yard drive that lasted nearly nine minutes at the close of the Bengals' win at Cleveland, he weaved around defenders, broke a tackle and dove out of another as he scored on a 10-yard touchdown run to push the score to 30-0 in the final seconds. He also stood out in the playoff loss at Indianapolis, filling in as an extra slot receiver with pass-catchers A.J. Green, James Wright, Tyler Eifert and Jermaine Gresham injured.

Lowlights: Fumbles were perhaps the greatest problem the Bengals' rushers had last season. They had six and lost two, including one at the start of a fourth quarter that saw the Pittsburgh Steelers come from behind, score 25 unanswered and win by 21. Just as he will with quarterback Andy Dalton, offensive coordinator Hue Jackson will spend the offseason preaching to his running backs about the value of protecting the football. After a relatively clean first three weeks of the season, the Bengals got increasingly sloppy in the area of turnovers as the season continued. The other major lowlight for the backfield was contending with Bernard's injuries.

Play of the year: Hill provided many options for the running backs' play of the year, but here we'll single out his 85-yard touchdown run in the first half of the Bengals' Monday night win over the Denver Broncos. The run was an important part of the win, as it came on the first play of the drive after Dalton had thrown a pick-six. With Denver in position to steal away early momentum, much like the Cleveland Browns did with a first-quarter interception in a Thursday night home game earlier in the year, the Bengals needed a spark. Hill provided that when he broke a tackle in the backfield, ran through an arm tackle and got great downfield blocking by Gresham and Sanu, in particular.

Necessary improvements: The biggest improvement the Bengals can make for their running backs is identifying each player's roles long before minicamp. Bernard's injuries stemmed, in part, from an unwillingness to tweak his style of play. A smaller, shiftier runner, he's better when used in space. Early in the season, Cincinnati was stubborn with him, often running him in power and dive calls when it may have been better to get him outside. There's no need to take that portion of Bernard's game away completely, but the Bengals will have to do a better job monitoring how physical his play is.